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"Functionality with easy setup, Finally 1.3 HDMI management in a quality unit at an affordable price." on by skooterpie
Pros: Price! User friendly. Great sound. Perfect 1080P throughput.
Cons: Owners Manual could have been a better product, but unit is so easy once you "get into it", I guess it didn't have to be.
Summary: Purchased as the heart of my living room HD upgrade. Inputs are through an XBOX 360 (composite video cable and R/W RCA for sound), Direct TV HDDVR (HDMI), PS3 (HDMI). Outputs are to a Sharp LC46D92U (HDMI) and Klipsch RSX-5's up front, RCX-4 center, RSX-4's rear and a KSW-10 sub (14 AWG spkr wire). On inital setup the owners manual leaves a bit to be desired. With the HDMI out to the TV hooked up, there was no inital on-screen menu to work with. I thought the unit was a DOA! Following a comprehensive reading, I found the display on the unit itself the key to switching the output to the HDMI. Violia, up came a simple menu to select inputs, lables, outputs and just about any other function the unit was capable of. One plug in of the remote mic brings up the Audyssey auto speaker calibration. What a great feature! All the guesswork of the surround balancing was taken care of! Time to test.. All switching worked as advertised and I saw no signal degradation with Bluray playing through PS3. HD Direct TV looked incredible too. HDDVR has selectable resolutions and formats that all functioned through the A/V reciever. The Xbox comes up in 780P with 2D sound due to RCA audio hookups (which the reciever found automatically) and plays fine. Remote lacks full backlight, but is very easy to function and was easily programed to operate the basic functions of the TV, HDDVR and PS3. There's tons of functions yet to be explored and I need to test the audio decoding capability and HDMI upscaling a bit more, but currently I'm very pleased with the performance of this unit. Don't shy away from the 90 Watt power rating. Unless your trying to fill a barn with sound, this one's got plenty of power. Previous rater may have missed a selectable upconverting option in the units menu. If i've read it right, he should be able to select if he wants the A/V reciver to upconvert or just throughput.
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"hdmi switching problem" on by journeyman110803
Pros: great clean sound, adequate power
Cons: when using hdmi, you need to turn on tv just to listen to cd
Summary: I connected a sony dvd player and samsung 1080p to the 605 via hdmi. when listening to cd, signal does not pass through the 605 unless you turn on the tv. once tv is turned on sound can be heard through the speakers connected to the 605. I called onkyo tech support and they're scratching their heads. the solution proposed was to connect an audio cable (optical or coaxial) if I wanted to just listen to music. This wasn't a very good solution since this goes againts the whole point of using the hdmi to run video and or audio using one cable and not have to run a separate audio cable.
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"Amazing - Worth even penny!" on by BobVH
Pros: Great audio, outstanding input/output setup, very good video upconverison
Cons: No back light on remote, instruction manual could be better organized
Summary: I just received my pre-order unit yesterday and spent last night installing it as the main control unit for my family room setup. This is an outstanding unit. You can't beat it for the price (I paid $399 at J&R) - well worth the $499 list. My setup consists of a PS3(HDMI), 720p HD Cox Cable Box(Component), Pioneer Tivo/DVD Burner - Series 2 (Component), Toshiba (progressive scan) standard DVD (Component with 6ch multichannel audio setup), XM radio, 5.1 speaker with front speakers bi-amp'd and a Sony Wega CRT(DVI). Setup is a little tricky, especially if you are someone (like me) that doen't read the entire manual before jumping into the install. Certain features, such getting the OSD to display via HDMI are buried in the back of the manual. Otherwise the system is easy to configure and can handle a wide varity of setup configurations. Once you understand the setup menu options, configuration is a breeze. I especially like the fact that each component and HDMI input is assignable to a specific source via the setup menu. This eliminates the need to pull the unit out and switch inputs around during setup. In additional you can manually edit the audio format playback configuration and adjust how the reciever processes each incoming audio signal format. Video upconversion looks great - I found myself about 12" from the screen switching the inputs back and forth trying to find the difference between the 1080p from the PS3 and the upconverted 720p from the cable box - they are very close. No reduction on the 1080p signal during the pass thru. Even the standard dvd upconversion looks good. Great crisp sound. Plenty of power for a non-dedicated theater application. Setup can be confgured to always boot the AVR with volume at the minimum level or prior volume setting. Zone 2 will continue feed a signal to the second amp when the SR605 is put in standby mode (off). Aussessy setup works well. I was able to configure my speaker setup on the first try -took about 5 minutes. The system presents the results of the Aussessy configuration via OSD and you have an opportunity to adjust the settings prior to saving the figures. Great buy - I'm looking at getting an SR805 or N905 unit when the are available for my dedicated theater.
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"Great audio, component video scaling issue" on by adamtorgerson
Pros: Awesome sound, easy configuration
Cons: Component inputs scaled to 4:3
Summary: I just got this, and loved the sound quality and adjustability. My only beef (but it is a decent one) is that the unit scales my component inputs to letterbox.
I took the same component device right out of the back of the receiver and plugged directly into component (same input) on the TV and it is at the appropriate aspect ratio (not stretched, but native signal) like it should be. Called tech support, and, after a 15 min hold time, some nudnik from Jersey said that the receiver does not have any scaling options - it "does what it does," so the only option is to go back to using my TV as my hub. That is not why I spent the money on this thing, though I will keep it for its awesome audio quality.
HDMI sources seem to work fine and retain proper aspect ratio. -
"Alot of HYPE" on by justpe8709
Pros: Sound was strong.Set up was easy. And that's it.
Cons: EVERYTHING ELSE
Summary: ok got this unit in Aug. 07, from C.City(they were great) had it for about 1 month the one night the HDMI stoped working to the point that it LOCKED up the unit,as if it were frozen.Like others I thought NOT MY NEW ONKYO 605!!!! I did alot of cable swapping NOTHING. IT WAS THE ONKYO! Took back to C.City and swapped, HERE IS WHERE THIS GETS REAL GOOD! Got home hooked it up(looks good) in less then 2 days while watching tv (by the way EVERYTHING is hooked up to a MONSTER HTS3500 mk2 protector)I hear a POP!!! look down at the ONKYO;grab the remote,hit power(to turn it off,RIGHT) and O MY GOD...FIRE(no kidding) FIRE shot out of the UNIT!I will not be buying this unit again!!!
Onkyo TX-SR605 user reviews (black)
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